


What Dolls Must Dream Of

by willowbilly



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Childhood Sweethearts, Depersonalization, Depression, Dorothy Walker's A+ Parenting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Childhood Trauma, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Introspection, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Not Actually Unrequited Love, One-Sided Relationship, Panic Attacks, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sexism, Slightly Non-Linear Narrative, Suicidal Ideation, Teen Years, Warning: Kilgrave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6253969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica and Trish, before and after, coming together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for: Kilgrave and all the associated rape/mind control/misogyny/emotional and physical abuse, as well as casual fatphobia, implied racism, and suicidal thoughts.

When Jessica was small she’d played with dolls. Like pretty much every other kid ever.

Toys shaped like people inhabit a special niche. You have to imbue them with a personality. They aren’t just inanimate shapes to build with or bounce off each other, as blocks or marbles are. Dolls stand as symbols of something greater; receptacles for whatever personality and motive the imagination which manipulates them cares to fill them with.

When she was still the spoiled only child in her pigtails and overalls, with a gummy gap in her smile that still tasted of cheap chocolate ice cream and blood from when she’d knocked her front milk teeth out in a schoolyard scuffle, Jessica would run around outside in the sunlight on the grass, avoiding the rainbow-crowned spray of the sprinkler and dragging her dolls along with her for the adventure. She had a couple GI Joes, the obligatory blonde Barbie, assorted mini plastic mannequins molded into businesspeople and Roman generals and the like.

She’d set them up against each other, running them through various narratives which caught her fancy. Often good against evil, of course. One of them usually serving as a hostage. One a despicable mastermind. One a hero, strong and fearless.

Jessica’s dolls didn’t last long. She played too roughly with them. They’d get broken or lost within weeks, if not days. Buried in a shallow sandbox grave. Chewed up by the neighbor’s boisterous golden retriever in an ill-advised game of fetch. Their heads yanked off in an execution scene enacted with a little too much zeal. Left carelessly on the pebbled expanse of black driveway asphalt and run over by the car pulling out for the morning commute to work.

Nothing left but twisted remains to be discarded, no longer lavished with a mercurial child’s vacuous love.

People weren’t dolls. You couldn’t just overwrite their free wills. They already had minds of their own and didn’t need that of a greater power’s imposed on them.

Unless you _were_ a greater power, with a child’s sense, or lack thereof, of responsibility, morality, and empathy. And it just _happens_ for you. Everyone, everywhere, obeying your every whim without question, whether you really _meant_ what you allowed to slip through your lips or not.

Everyone in the entire world.

Dolls.

 

~~~

 

“You’re hungry,” he says.

“Starving,” she agrees. She’s smiling, the kind of smile which reaches the eyes, and leaning into the hand which he’s placed possessively on the small of her back. His fingers are spread out, over her shirt but under the insulating leather shell of her jacket, a spider-like splay of warmth stroking and pressing and tapping restlessly against her, the pressure shifting like he’s seeking to strike the right combination of hidden buttons, to find the code which will pop her open.

She doesn’t know what’s happening, not completely, not yet, and she is afraid.

Jessica’s been scared a few times before in her life. Truly terrified. The worst she thought she’d ever experience was the split-second moment of the car crash, a fleeting eclipse which had instantaneously overtaken her entire being, blindingly raw, so white-hot her nerves were drenched cold, crackling with electric ice that tried to burst her shuddering heart from her chest, blood rushing out from her extremities to leave them buzzing and a scream blossoming in her throat with razor-blade petals only to be cut off with her air as they all hurtled forward into blunt-force oblivion, out of which only one of whom would ever reemerge. Dead-stop. That’s a wrap.

It ended. It was over.

Being under Kilgrave’s sway was essentially that excruciating moment, extended eternally.

The Italian place they walk into is classy and tastefully decorated: the man who comes up to them is attired in a suit rather than a polo shirt with a nametag. “If you’ll come right this way,” he says to them, an arm out to indicate their direction.

Kilgrave bounces on his toes and cranes his neck around, chin tilted up speculatively as he scans the room. His eyes alight on a large booth in the corner, comfortable and out-of-the-way, the family members which are already seated there chattering amongst each other as they peruse the menu. “Actually, you think we’re such a lovely couple that you’ve decided to give us that table over there,” he says, pointing peremptorily.

The man looks over at the booth, then nods, a vacantly charmed expression overtaking his face. “Yes, of course. You two are adorable together, you know,” he says.

Kilgrave slides into the booth even as their attendant is ushering the increasingly confused and outraged family out of it. Kilgrave pulls Jessica in beside him and waves his other hand at them as though shooing away a pesky fly. “Oh, shut it and leave, already.”

And they do, falling silent and simply walking off as one, the smallest child’s hand engulfed in her father’s, her head turning to stare askance at them as they go. Jessica watches, her smile unchanging, a thickness lodged in her throat and dread twining queasily with the false hunger clenching her stomach.

Kilgrave orders wine and a dish that he tells her she’ll find delicious and calls for candles to create a more romantic atmosphere, and then he shimmies over to sit directly across from her and plants his elbows on the table, leaning his face closer to hers and staring deeply into her eyes. “Well, Jessica dear,” he says, his breath guttering the fragile orange tongues of the candle flames. “Let’s learn a little about each other, hmm? What’s, oh… your favorite color?”

“Black.” It was strong and solid, comforting as a good night’s sleep. When she’d gone through a short-lived goth phase Trish had helped her paint her nails, sitting cross-legged across from her and gently gripping her wrist or ankle to steady her over the crackling newspapers laid down to protect the carpet, the glossy brush dipped into the little plastic bottle, excess drips tapped off on the inside of the neck, coming out and oh-so-carefully down to meticulously spread obsidian over seashell pink and crescent white.

He draws back slightly, his brows pinching in dismay. “ _Black?_ How very dull. It should be something more interesting. More rich. Like purple.” An impish grin spreads across his face. “Purple’s _my_ favorite. It’s yours now, too, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says, and it is.

“Good, goo— is that a _knife,_ you naughty girl?”

Her head dips down in a nod of affirmation without a trace of reluctance or duplicity.

He _tsks_ , fond and amused as though scolding a beloved but wayward pet, and holds out a hand, palm up. “Give it here and don’t bother trying any silly thing like that again.”

She slides the dinner knife she’d snuck from the row of silverware lined up on the snowy triangle of her linen napkin out from her sleeve and places its hilt in his grasp. The metal is buffed to a mirror shine, warmed from having lain even briefly next to the blue river branches of her veins, separated from the pump of her blood only by a soft layer of skin that she will not have a chance to break. The faintest hint of stubble is coming in over his cheeks, his sharp jawline, slightly down his neck, prickling over the lump of his Adam’s apple, the slender, soft-hard contours of his throat unguarded and yet effortlessly invulnerable.

The knife is set down next to his plate with a clack muffled by the deep scarlet tablecloth. He laces his hands together and props his chin on them, studying her, smug and enraptured. Fire dances in his eyes and throws shadows onto the upper planes of his face, darkness collecting in the grooves between the white marble tombstones of each glistening tooth bared by the carefree stretch of his thin, mobile lips. “Well, go on. Tell me more about yourself. Tell me _everything_.”

 

~~~

 

He gets it into his head to sweep her away on a trip. Asks her where she would like to go, if she could go anywhere in the world.

 _Hell’s Kitchen_ , she says, because it’s her home. Because she doesn’t want to be dragged away.

He specifies: If she could go for a vacation anywhere, well, anywhere tropical and exotic with nice hotels and white-sand beaches, where would she want to go?

There was a postcard Trish had pinned to her wall. Cabo. She’d been obsessed. Said to Jessica that she’d be going there someday, far out of reach of her mother’s strangling clutches, far away, to a place of humid air and wide blue skies so unlike this dingy, crowded place with its oppressive expectations and stage lights and makeup applied by indifferent hands to hide fresh bruises from the camera’s black, discerning eye. Chiding and cheerful, she’d told Jessica not to look so gloomy when Jessica’s thoughts had turned to selfish fears of being left behind and her expression slipped, had given too much away to someone who’d learned how to read her too well. _You’ll be coming with me_.

Jessica answers him.

They arrive at the airport in a stretch limousine and pass straight through security without once being stopped, no fuss or frisking, no luggage because Kilgrave will just take whatever he needs for them wherever they go, and they settle into first class, wrapped in luxury. “Only the best for my Jessie.” Engine roaring, pressing in on her eardrums, all-encompassing. Hollowed out from having her entrails gutted by gravity’s relentless grasp. His hand on her knee. Chilled flute of white wine, shining through misted glass. Clouds drifting in insubstantial mounds through the narrow oval window, and the ocean sprawled like a vast sheet of battered metal below.

Are there things swimming down below froth-spackled waves? Hiding beneath the surface? Maybe, she thinks. Deep, deep down. Where it’s safe.

“It’s so exciting. Like our honeymoon,” he murmurs giddily, lips brushing her ear, and the hair on the back of her neck rises but she does not flinch away.

She’s tired and inexplicably cold despite the elegantly voluminous layers of her new, expensive clothing. Her stomach hurts. Myriad little pains squirm, itchy and throbbing, in her tissues. The fabric of her underwear chafes stickily against her. Her jaw aches and her lips are swollen and there’s a bite mark that sits stiffly in the tender muscle of her tongue.

She does not allow herself to think on how any of these discomforts were attained. She leans away as he adjusts his chair obnoxiously far back, absently silencing the objections of the passenger behind him, putting a black silk sleep mask over his eyes, arms crossing over his chest as he wriggles into a comfortable position. She looks away from him once she’s sure he’s finally sleeping. Back out the window. She imagines falling.

 

~~~

 

The craft fair, or festival, or whatever, is _packed_ with people, the noisy press of the crowd adding to the airless swelter of the dusty street, but there’s a bubble of clear space around them from Kilgrave’s constant stream of requests for room, for others to step aside. She’s discovered he can’t abide physical contact when it’s initiated by others. By strangers he’s uninterested in.

“It’s downright tiring,” he whines, pausing to take refuge in the meager bar of shade afforded by a lissome palm tree, the scale-like bark scraping audibly against his starched shirt as he leans against it. Patches of sweat have soaked through at his armpits, darkening the fabric. Jessica’s much cooler in her diaphanous pastel sundress, but she can feel grit collecting on her exposed legs like teasing phantom touches, making her skin crawl. She misses the protection of her jeans. Hates being made to shave. Hates being told she’s not presentable enough, being told what to do, how to act.

Simply… hates.

Kilgrave snaps his fingers as one would when ordering a dog to heel so as to get the attention of a passing tourist, a middle-aged, pink-faced, overweight man whose iconic Yankee sightseer’s outfit of baseball cap, Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and combination of socks and sandals was completed by the camera slung around his neck. “Here, you. Go fetch me a bottle of water. And run, why don’t you. Make it _fast_ , no dawdling.”

“Sure, yeah,” the man huffs in easy acquiescence, looking at first pleased to be of assistance and then vaguely more and more panicked as he turns in a random direction and haphazardly shoulders away through the shifting mass of people, his sandals slapping the ground heavily as he pushes himself double time. Must not be a deadlines person.

“Now there’s a heart attack waiting to happen,” Kilgrave snorts derisively. “A little cardio can only be good for him.”

Jessica is distracted by a touch on her elbow, firm but not demanding. The woman whose table they’ve stopped beside has gotten up from her chair and is grinning at her, her graying hair scraped back from her broad, brown face into a thick bun. She’s heavyset, matronly, with a long navy blue skirt and sparse eyebrows which rise in friendly arches over an incongruously tough-guy pair of narrow, mirrored sunglasses. Jessica’s reflection looks warped and sickly white in their blackness, her own eyes huge and shadowed, lips painted red and arranged into a pleasant smile that feels permanently sculpted into her cheeks.

“Very fine. Very good price,” the woman informs them, gesturing invitingly at the array of jewelry nestled in their padded velvet cases, glittering in the glaring overhead sunlight as though molten.

“Yes?” Kilgrave moves to inspect her wares. “Ah, not bad.” He squeezes Jessica’s bare shoulder, his damp skin sticking slightly to hers. “You _could_ do with a little more decoration, my dear. Which of those do you find prettiest?”

“They’re just a bunch of useless baubles,” Jessica tells him, but for all its resentment it’s a futile, halfhearted sort of protest, and her slender hand feels detached from herself as it lifts, hovers, and then points at a pair of rather large, dangly silver earrings, pieces like miniature sword blades hanging from the base of a triangular wire frame, increasing in length at the middle into something of an arrow’s point.

“I suppose those’ll do,” he says, rummaging in his pocket for his Spanish-to-English dictionary. He starts flipping through the battered little paperback, grumbling impatiently to himself and soft, yellowed pages rustling, before he says, “Oh, for god’s sake— you speak English, yes?”

The woman nods proudly. “I speak very well.”

“Great!” Kilgrave claps his hands together decisively, his lips pressing together and then smacking apart at the moment he begins to speak, his sandwiched hands shifting into the shape of a gun which he then aims at the item Jessica’s selected. “You want to give Jessie here that pair of earrings for free.” Each word is uttered with exaggerated volume and distinction, as though to a moron who may otherwise miss the obvious.

The woman’s eyebrows twitch upwards briefly, processing, before she walks around the table to retrieve the earring box in question out from behind the glass. She straightens, comes back, and presses it into Jessica’s hands, her smile broadening reassuringly as she does so. “Please, take them,” she says, kindly, sincerely. “I want you to have them.”

Jessica breathes in through her nose. Gently accepts the box. Breathes out.

“Thank you,” she says.

The woman pats her cheek as though Jessica has struck her as somehow sweet or endearing before turning away, an oddly familiar, motherly gesture that Jessica doesn’t expect, and which makes her feel deceitful, and guilty, and very, very small.

Kilgrave fans himself with his hand and glowers up at the sun as though it has personally singled him out for harassment. “God, I hate this bloody place. Where is that loutish pig with my water?”

Jessica shuts the earring box with a muted snap.

 

~~~

 

The wide, white bedroom is bathed in mellow sunset orange, the doors to the balcony thrown open to welcome the rolling crashes of ocean waves and a brine-scented breeze which lifts the gossamer curtains into hypnotic, shimmering ripples. The king-size mattress is unbearably soft underneath her where she sits clothed only in a towel, fresh from the shower and already sweating, her wet hair dripping cool, tickling trickles of water down her spine where it rests limp and heavy down her back. It feels like she’s going to sink through all the way to the floor. The carpet under her bare feet is likewise luxuriously thick and yielding. There are no hard edges anywhere and she smells like a stranger’s hair products, a stranger’s body wash, and it’s like she's an unwanted computer program being gradually overwritten. It's like she’s in a dream.

A nightmare.

“Jessica!” he calls, but it’s not quite an order, there’s no demand for her location, so she smothers the twinge which urges her to respond and keeps her silence. Small acts of defiance are the only ones she’s even capable of against him.

His footsteps are quiet on the carpet, but she can still hear them. He’s never had to watch where he’s going, has never taken care not to cause undue noise, so he’s inefficient in his motions. Without stealth. Not ungraceful, precisely, but blithe.

Perhaps she’s become attuned to him. She’s a clockwork machine revolving around the energy he imparts. He’s a force as implacable as gravity. Inescapable.

“Jessica,” he says, catching sight of her. The bed dips under his weight as he crawls onto it, shuffles up behind her on his knees to wrap angular arms too tightly around her, to whisper her name again into her ear, eager hands scrabbling roughly over her and a hungry mouth gnawing at her as though to devour.

He tells her to enjoy it, as he has before. So she does. As she has before.

But he sees the repulsion and self-loathing in her face which she has not been instructed to hide, and this time he’s finally fed up and goes further than simply compelling her to rearrange her expression, and to beg and moan in a debasing performance of wanton pleasure. _No no no_ , he huffs, petulantly wistful, a speck of foamy saliva caught at the corner of lips twisted into a displeased snarl. _That won’t do_ , he says.

 _Imagine I’m someone you love_ , he says.

And Jessica’s traitorously compliant mind flashes to curled blond hair sweeping around her like a protective veil, the smell of vanilla and spice, and a low, level, feminine voice. For the first time since she’s fallen under Kilgrave’s sway her eyes flood with tears and she cries as though she’s breaking apart, and knows, beyond the slightest trace of a doubt, that there’s no salvation in store for her.

Afterwards she can’t muster the energy to move and stays flat on her back, staring despondently at the sunset glow burnishing the ceiling, the creamy plastic blades of the fan overhead beating against the heavy air, lengthening shadows spinning out and being whipped away in a dizzying whir. Kilgrave lazily props himself up on an elbow and looks her over with a shining, ravenous gaze, as though he finds her beautiful. “Oh, darling,” he murmurs dotingly, brushing at the salty moisture which stings her cheeks. “Don’t cry. Don’t worry. We’ll be with each other for a good while yet. For forever.”

She rolls her head away from him, out from under his fingers, and growls shakily, _unwisely_ , “Fuck you, asshole.”

There is a profoundly long, stifling pause before her face is suddenly seized in an iron grip, his nails digging into her flesh. “Look at me,” he says, fury garbling his tone and hissing around the edges of his words, and she does. She also purses her lips and spits full into his face.

He sits up and slaps her. His hair is in disarray, his sunburned skin flushed, and the stench of sex hangs thickly about them as he draws back his arm for another blow before his face contorts and he visibly restrains himself. “Either keep a civil tongue in your mouth,” he pants, affecting calm, “or rip it out of your head.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she sneers, and reaches between her teeth to pinch around the slimy root of her tongue. With her strength it’ll only take a second.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snaps, and settles back on his ankles, rubbing at his temple as though to massage away a newborn headache with a laborious sigh. “Jessica. Jessica, Jessica, Jessica. I do so much for you. I give you everything, I take care of you, I _love_ you… and this is how you repay me?”

She snorts at the delusional, misogynistic cliché and glares all of her hot and ugly hatred at him.

He stares back, dully, eyes half-lidded. “What do you really think of me?”

“You’re a monster. A sick, selfish, childish freak without even a fucking soul in your sorry carcass.”

He tips his head to the side. “And what would that make you?”

“The idiot you enslaved.”

“You’re not my slave, Jessica.”

Bitter, bubbling laughter spews like vomit from her lips. “Yeah fucking right, you fucking psycho.”

Kilgrave sighs again and slides away, coming to stand with his back towards her. “Stay where you are.”

He showers and dresses. Fixes cufflinks into place as he strides towards the door and pauses, one hand on the handle, without looking at her. “You may not understand now, Jessica, but you will eventually. That’s a promise.”

The door shuts, the lock clicking home behind him. The damp sheets and her tangled hair slowly dry in the chill air seeping in through the balcony doors, the light fading to a dim blue.

She stays where she is. And waits.

 

~~~

 

They depart a few days later when the owner of the house turns out to have affiliations to some cartel or other and a squad of men with guns are sent in to kill them.

Kilgrave makes Jessica take care of it, then has her clean herself up and apply her makeup before they head out, her lipstick the same vibrant shade of scarlet as the blood swirling down the drain. In between packing what possessions he considers worth holding on to, at least for now, he unearths the earring case and tosses it at her. “Put those on, too.”

She returns to the mirror. Turns her head and looks out the corner of her eye at her earlobe. The hook on the back of the earring is dull, made to slide into ears which are already pierced, but she pushes it through without any trouble, the skin stretching almost translucently against the spike before breaking through between the pads of her fingers with a sharp stinging sensation akin to a silent pop, the flesh instantly darkening to an angry red and pulsing with heat in time to her heartbeat, thin blood welling out around the fresh-made hole and crusting against the metal.

It only takes but a moment.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings for: canonical child abuse, major depression, rape and mind control aftermath, kind of inadvertent self harm, and suicidal ideation.

Before the car crash Jessica knew that Trish had only been aware of Jessica as a vague figure skulking on the periphery of her social circle, interchangeable with any number of other vague, skulking figures. Trish was a school celebrity, after all, sunny and patient and always happy to participate or mediate, whereas Jessica was known far and wide as a sullen, antisocial bitch with the asshole sort of humor that usually came at other people’s expense, even before her whole family oh-so-tragically perished and she had an actual goddamned reason to be cranky. In the aftermath everyone walked on eggshells around her and treated her with kid gloves, superficial sympathies and condolences often overlaying a gleam in the eye which spoke of the private belief that if anything that awful had to have happened to anyone, at least it had happened to a suitably awful person. And there was always a guilty tinge of relief that it hadn’t been them.

Not Trish, though. She was unfailingly kind to Jessica, because she was a fucking little perfect angel, but distant, rather perfunctory, really, and she’d never been relieved to be spared because she’d never had the sort of family you could lose that way. Hell, it probably would’ve been a stroke of luck if good ole Dorothy Walker met her unfortunate demise and been out of Trish’s life a lot sooner. Good fucking riddance.

After an initial flurry of media attention and rounds with various physical therapists who helped Jessica work through the lingering adverse effects inflicted on her body by the crash and coma, as well as a short-lived stint with a therapist of the psychological variety who tried to help her “process her grief” which came to an end after Jessica gave up the silent treatment in favor of telling him to fuck off, Jessica found herself in a sort of limbo. She’d never really had close friends, and most of her peers with whom she had hung out with had drawn away from her, recoiling from the prospect, the potential responsibility, of having to offer emotional support or some shit to someone in mourning when they more than likely didn’t actually care. Jessica didn’t have a mom or dad or a pest of a little brother waiting at home for her anymore, who interacted with her on a daily basis because together they all made up a happy little nuclear family unit of which she was a part, providing her a place to fit into where she was accepted and welcomed. A family who loved her, who, granted, kind of _had_ to love her, but it was still genuine. Had been genuine.

Returning to school was disconcerting and uncomfortable, chafing and confining, like trying to fit into an article of clothing that’d been outgrown. Besides the exciting new levels of solitude Jessica was achieving, and the furtive stares and whispering and the spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to turn her into a local survivor’s story to inspire hope or stand as an example or whatever the fuck, Trish now… well, knew her. Furthermore, Trish, operating with awkward reluctance under Dorothy’s direct instructions, went out of her way to be seen beside Jessica in public so as to sell their publicity ploy as the real deal.

In school this translated to sitting next to her at lunch and in what classes they shared, while back at Trish’s home Jessica felt like a ghostly interloper, wincing when the floor creaked under the weight of her footsteps, dully abiding by Dorothy’s “yes ma’am, no ma’am, thank you ma’am” rules of polite conduct so as to remain ignored, and otherwise staying resolutely barricaded in her room. Putting on her earphones and listening to music was usually enough to keep her sluggish, empty mind from filling with thoughts she’d rather never occur, and would drown out the sounds of Trish and Dorothy’s fighting, Trish’s strident, frustrated tones of hurt and desperation undercut by the lower, nasty cadences of her mother asserting all the many traits of Trish’s which made her a worthless weakling, a mewling disappointment too lazy to just suck it up and do whatever Dorothy said.

Trish always lost those arguments. She’d go to her room, the door slamming thunderously behind her. The bedsprings would squeak as she threw herself face down into her pillow, and then there would be the high, hoarse hum of a muffled scream which Jessica could almost feel resonating through their shared wall, crawling into the marrow of her bones and settling there to itch until Trish exhausted her anger and broke down into sobs instead.

Trish’s makeup was impeccable, covering any bruises, hiding the shadows of stress and sleeplessness, but Jessica always noticed when the whites of her eyes were stained salmon-colored, threaded through with delicate traceries of irritated veins, and Jessica would spend the day glaring at everyone that Trish interacted with, her various starry-eyed sycophants and the teachers impressed by their straight-A student alike. She’d wait for one of them to notice, to see the way Trish’s fingers reached up to pluck and fidget with the gauzy scarf obscuring the slim column of her neck whenever the subject of her home life or her filming came up. None of them ever did, and Jessica was left to wonder why it bothered her so.

Lunch would come. Trish would tug gently on her arm to keep her from ditching and they’d both slide onto a bench at their usual table, next to each other. As the seats filled up Trish would end up scooting closer to Jessica to make more room, her thigh pressing alongside Jessica’s, the warmth of another body gradually growing discernible through her jeans. Trish would chatter brightly with her friends, her hand rising to tuck her hair behind her ear, throwing her head back to laugh at a joke so that Jessica, slouching over the table with her chin on her arms, could see a flash of molars in a row, and Jessica would watch her out of the corner of her eye, feigning disinterest as she observed how much Trish and the others talked, and how much, or rather, how little, was actually said.

  
Trish was a master at manipulating the flow of conversation, directing it back at other people. They’re always eager to blabber on about themselves, and Trish was one of those rare individuals who truly loved to listen to others. She didn’t just hear them. She actually _listened_ , and she understood, and for that she was effortlessly and honestly adored.

Jessica would stay silent beside her unless she saw a glimmer of fatigue, a pinch around the eyes which spoke of a headache, a hesitancy to engage, and then she’d butt in, blunt and uncompromising, and strongly suggest that maybe Trish was feeling tired and should be left alone for now. The first several times she surprised herself by offering herself up as a buffer, like some sort of overzealous bodyguard, but Trish always seemed thankful and would smoothly defuse the tension of Jessica’s proclamation with self-deprecating agreement, and the others would shrug it off and ask someone else for help on their stupid homework assignments.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Trish murmured to her once.

“Might as well,” Jessica said. “You’re too fucking nice to do it yourself.”

And Trish snorted and hid a smile, as though Jessica had told a joke.

A friend of Trish’s had a birthday party and Jessica was invited along with Trish because by then Jessica had become Trish’s inseparable shadow. Dorothy, shockingly enough, actually granted permission for them to go, though later that night she was the first one back to pick them up.

All of the jovial people with their cheesy party hats and effusive well-wishing put Jessica on edge, and she hung back even farther than she usually would, her back to the wall under the ridiculous banner, eyes narrowed. She couldn’t help softening somewhat when Trish sidled up to her after the traditional ritual of the song followed by the blowing out of the candles, a paper plate piled high with an airy slice of processed sugar store-bought cake topped with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream in each hand. Trish balanced one on the tips of her spread fingers like a fancy server presenting a dish of fine cuisine, and said, “For you, mademoiselle,” as she offered it. The red-and-blue striped cone of her party hat leaned precariously far forward on her head, like the ugly, unwieldy horn of a particularly psychedelic unicorn.

Jessica smiled, small but genuinely, as she took the plate. The white plastic fork stuck straight up out of the ice cream, which was already melting, creeping out in a pool around the cake and covering whatever glossy image of whatever mainstream movie character the plate boasted. She could feel the damp cold through the stiff paper, her thumb curling around the wrinkled edge and sliding into a wayward drop of ice cream. “Better not let your mom find out you had some. Like, ever.”

“Hey,” Trish said, shoveling a chunk of artificially flavored dessert into her mouth and hunching both shoulders up into a philosophical shrug, “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” But she cast her eyes off to the side, unwillingly pensive.

Jessica nudged her to break her out of the worry spiral she’d probably gotten herself started on. “Don’t sweat it. It’ll be our little secret.”

“Ours and everyone else’s in the room,” Trish pointed out, but she was smiling and meeting Jessica’s eyes again, and when she finished her serving Jessica passed her half-eaten one back over for Trish to finish, and it was accepted without question.

The kids all gathered in the living room to play games later and Trish physically dragged Jessica along, cajoling her into the circle on the floor when some moron got the brilliant idea to do spin the bottle with a plastic bottle of soda. Nerves fluttered in Jessica’s stomach and she had vivid visions of punching anyone who locked lips with Trish, and possibly of biting anyone with the gall to try and plant a smacker on her.

Everyone was too rowdy to take it seriously and it fell apart into a mess of lewdness and laughter after just a couple of rounds, thank fucking god.

But in spite of her relief Jessica felt oddly disappointed afterwards. She stared up at her ceiling that night, imagining giving the bright green bottle a flick to send it rotating over the beige carpet, flashing in the light, seeing it slow to a stop, the tapered neck and screw-on cap pointing at Trish, who would blush and chuckle but turn to face her squarely with mock gravitas. She pressed a hand to her lips and imagined a sticky kiss that tasted too sweetly of birthday cake and ice cream.

Said aloud, “Oh _fuck_.”

 

~~~

 

Jessica goes back to Trish after Kilgrave. Like a homing pigeon to its original roost, and as thoughtless and unerring.

She feels cut free, but like a puppet whose strings have been severed. There’s nothing left. No… reason. Kilgrave had hollowed out all her motivation and replaced it with his own repugnantly all-encompassing direction, and now that’s gone too.

More than anything else that infuriates her is the fact that it feels like a loss. Like a _fucking loss_ , something she _misses_ , and she would rage about that, she’d finger-paint him a eulogy of obscenities and damnation with his own blood if he wasn’t already dead in the wake of the blinding headlights and the shattering impact of the momentum which carried that metallic mass careening forward and full on into him, an _accident_ , too sudden and too merciful by far for all the horrendous pain he’d brought to a world which is plenty cruel enough without him. Unfittingly mundane. _Inane_. The punch line of a bad joke.

So there she is at Trish’s with nobody making her do anything, and therefore with nothing to do. Trish, being both a saint and privately anguished over the whole fucking affair, has Jessica take her bed, maybe to balance out the fact that Jessica absolutely forbade her from taking time off work to serve as some kind of personal nursemaid the way she wanted to. It is a nice bed. Queen-size. Feather pillows. Comforter. Sheets with a decent thread count. Jessica spends much of her time there, either sleeping or wishing she was asleep because at least your head’s _supposed_ to be empty when you’re unconscious, and you’re not as leadenly tired as you are when you’re awake.

Sometimes she’ll stir when Trish gets in. Maybe even get out of the bed and do her best impression of a living, breathing, thinking, functioning, non-zombified _person_ , but Jessica’s skills have never lain in acting and her attempts at normalcy make Trish look brittle, somehow, her stiff smiles hiding something fragile and tremulous and far too worried with discouraging Jessica to allow her own vulnerabilities voice. This fake mask of… of _fineness_ reminds Jessica too sharply and darkly of how she’d looked when she was a teen intent on deflecting others’ suspicions of Dorothy’s abuse. If there was anything left in Jessica besides stale air circulating sluggishly in her empty shell she might’ve confronted Trish about it, told her that she’s allowed to be something other than a perfect martyr suffering in silence, that she’s allowed to be _human_ , and _sad_ , and _selfish_ , but Trish would never stop caring about Jessica enough to take it to heart and Jessica doesn’t have enough credit left in her motivation account to dredge up the energy for such useless pursuits as emotion. Not in this fucking economy.

There’s one of those radios with an alarm clock built in which sits on Trish’s nightstand, in front of the lamp and to the side of the glass of water that Trish scrupulously refreshes for her, within Jessica’s reach if she rolls over and stretches out an arm. Sometimes even that’s too much, but occasionally the silence presses in on Jessica’s eardrums, the beat of her pulse slowly morphing into a rhythmic chant in a voice that’s burrowed itself a home deep in the recesses of her brain, and she turns the radio on. Flips it to a local channel and disinterestedly tunes out whatever chatter it emits, but it nonetheless anchors her a little. Reminds her what’s real.

 _Trish Talks_ comes on eventually. It’s the first time that Jessica’s really listened to Trish’s show. She knows about it, of course. She went to the party to celebrate when it first went on air, and congratulated Trish with genuine pride warming her words, but Jessica isn’t the type of person who bothers with that sort of entertainment. It’s just never held her interest.

But this is a different Trish than the one who comes back at the end of the day and sits beside her with a sigh and gentle words of reassurance and hope that she herself maybe only half believes, the caretaker straining under the burden Jessica’s become. It’s what Trish is like separated from Jessica.

She’s a master, conducting the interviews with an easy incisiveness and confidence tempered by a deft tactfulness. The way she manipulates the flow of the conversation into something smooth and intriguing, drawing the shyer subjects out of their shells and rerouting the would-be rants of the more overbearing, reminds Jessica that Trish used to be like that even back at the high school lunch table, making sure everyone got to have their say. Trish had always seemed so effortlessly adept at forging connection, while Jessica’s talents were more along the lines of near-instantaneous alienation and the spreading of strife.

Maybe opposites do attract.

Ha.

 

~~~

 

In the end the thing that gets Jessica out of her funk, or, as Trish so cutely, adamantly calls it, her "depressive episode," is when _his_ voice starts screaming her name and she’s seized by the icy fear that he’ll order her to stay where she is, again, only this time he’ll never let her back up. She’ll be sprawled out on that bed indefinitely, her muscles atrophying, her skin building up a layer of gummy grime that coats every crevice, her mind eating itself until there isn’t anything left, just some pathetic pile of worthless, rotting _filth_ staining the mattress.

She gets to her feet out of spite, and starts to accompany Trish on her morning runs because maybe if she goes fast enough, far enough, she can leave everything of him behind her in the goddamn dust.

Trish is delighted but cautious, and tries to hide her optimism as she had her despair, but Jessica can still see it in the way that she perks up when Jessica enters the room, in how the carriage of her shoulders seems lighter and how her smiles now reach her eyes.

Jessica’s eyes are still dead when she meets them in the mirror, and whenever she practices her own smile, trying to convince herself that things are better, that _she_ can be better, for Trish, if for nothing or nobody else, she hears _him_ , chiding her, urging her to try and _look a little more cheerful, now, Jessie_.

Trish sits her down at the dining room table and uses tweezers to remove shards of mirror glass from her fist, little splinters of scarlet-edged silver which clink almost inaudibly against the robin’s egg blue saucer on which they’re deposited, like the ringing of fairy bells.

“You really did a number on yourself, here,” Trish murmurs absently, lips almost unmoving as she concentrates on her delicate task, her hands warm where they’re braced around Jessica’s cold ones.

A sense of déjà vu momentarily interposes the image of a brush tipped with inky, glistening nail polish over that of the tweezers, and Jessica, in what must surely appear to be out of nowhere, declares flatly, “Black is my favorite color.”

The tweezers pause briefly, hovering in midair, and behind Trish’s outward non-reaction Jessica knows that she’s busy spinning out various possible responses like a chess player calculating the repercussions of any given set of moves, searching for the one least likely to contain yet another trigger that Trish is unaware of. Her eyes flick up to Jessica’s, and Jessica averts her gaze with an embarrassment akin to shame.

Jessica clears her throat as if that would be enough to erase her non sequitur and jerks her chin towards her hand cradled within Trish’s. “It doesn’t actually hurt that much. I mean, it’s pretty much nothing compared to some things I… that happened.”

Trish resumes picking at the constellation of glass slivers peppered across Jessica’s knuckles, an image in a roll of film, taken off pause. “You don’t have to pretend you’re okay after the living hell he put you through.” Her jaw has gone tight with anger on Jessica’s behalf, her teeth gritted, but her grip on Jessica remains achingly tender, as though holding something precious and exceedingly, terribly breakable, something that hasn’t been irredeemably sullied down to the very least of its fibers.

It is unbearable.

Jessica pulls away and stands up so violently that the chair is shoved backwards and tips over to clatter loudly on the floor. Her breathing echoes startlingly loud and ragged, and her hands are clenched into fists, the rusty-stained skin of the injured one pulled painfully taut over the white protrusions of her bones. The tweezers are set steadily down next to the blood-speckled porcelain saucer before Trish looks up at her, utterly calm and unsurprised. She’d known the reaction her words would incite, and Jessica wonders if it has finally, miraculously happened. If this is to be the moment that Trish decides to stop caring.

“That’s fucking rich coming from you, _Patsy._ You are _always_ pretending you’re completely in control and perfectly happy, so I don’t see why you should give a shit when I decide I don’t want to come off like a goddamn pussy for the rest of my pointless fucking life.”

There’s a sheen of tears in Trish’s eyes, but she isn’t blinking to clear them away, just letting them build up into a shimmer that captures more and more astral pinpricks of dancing light. She gets up, moving as slowly and deliberately as an old woman, and goes into the kitchen. Retrieves a stainless steel teakettle from a cupboard. Fills it with water from the sink, sets it on the stovetop, and twists the dial to put it on the right temperature.

They wait there in silence, Trish moving to lean her elbows against the counter, her back curved forward in a weary slope, Jessica’s stance relaxing into something softer and better balanced as she rolls her weight back onto the heels of her aching feet and her hands uncurl, until the hiss of steam from the kettle sharpens into a piercingly shrill whistle which wavers through the room like the shriek of a dying rabbit. The dial is smartly clicked off, the whistle fades, and Trish mechanically collects two mugs and selects two packets from the tea caddy before turning. She’s composed herself, her shoulders squared and expression opaque. Her eyes are no longer wet, but Jessica realizes that, unbeknownst to herself, hers have become so. Tears well up, trembling until they overflow and slip down her cheeks, stiffening her skin with salt and blurring her vision. Their tracks against her flesh feel like they’ve been left by the drag of a jagged knife, slender strips flayed from her.

She sniffs noisily and presses a palm to each eye, grinds inward until blotchy kaleidoscopes of color bloom behind her lids and the searing moisture is smeared away. “Fuck,” she whimpers, wretched and remorseful. Without the stabilizing influence, or perhaps the distraction, of her sight, she can feel her exhausted body swaying slightly, creakily, like a thin, scraggly tree in the wind whose roots are anchored too shallowly in thin soil. “Fuck. Trish, that was shitty. That was shitty and I didn’t mean that.”

The mugs thump softly as they’re arranged on the table and Jessica looks back at Trish in time to see her quirk a corner of her mouth upward and shake her head slightly, silently indicating that Jessica should at least wait for the tea before plowing through the issue before them. It could almost have been taken as humorous.

Jessica nods and drags her chair upright so that she has somewhere besides the floor on which to collapse onto her ass. The chair’s weight should be insignificant, even to someone without super strength, but she seems so feeble and sluggish, every necessary motion an impossibly draining chore. She wants to get this over with so that she can go back to bed and just… Not. Do. Anything. Ever again.

She leans back, slumping and craning her neck back until the base of her skull can rest on the hard upper edge of the chair’s back and her arms hanging limp at her sides, her throat bared so that the cartilaginous structure of her trachea arches out tightly against her skin. Probably the very picture of dejection. It’s intensely uncomfortable but she can’t bring herself to change positions as she listens to the tea packets being torn open with the ripping of paper, the faint rustle against ceramic as they’re dropped into the mugs. Trish walking away for the kettle, the sound of water pouring when she returns. It’s soothingly domestic and Jessica zones out until she feels Trish sliding her hand between her head and the chair, nudging her upright. She goes with a groan and the pop of vertebrae, hunching forward now instead and lacing her fingers around the heat of her drink.

The steam caresses her face as she bends over it and breathes it in, inhaling the headily rich aroma of chai mingled with milk and honey. As she exhales she offers Trish a humble, mumbled _thanks_.

“We both needed it,” Trish says rather wryly, sitting down opposite her with her plain green tea. Jessica doesn’t know how she can stand the stuff; it would be bland even if she did add cream or sugar or some shit to it but as it is the brew’s barely better than boiled water. In Jessica’s opinion, anyway.

“You know,” Jessica says with blank offhandedness, staring at the billowing swirl of chalky pigmentation in the depths of her tea where the milk remains slightly apart, “I used to be so proud about never crying. Not even when I was alone. When I was really little I burned myself on one of those stupid scented candles my mom liked to light up for the holidays to make the house smell like apple cinnamon pie shit, and I didn’t cry. I almost set the house on fire and I still have the scar but I didn’t cry. The first time I even remember crying was when I woke up in that hospital bed and found out about my family dying.” _Kind of a rude awakening_ , she thinks, facetiously, but her throat closes before she can add it aloud. She lifts the mug to her lips and slurps up a scalding mouthful of tea to distract herself, a comfortable warmth settling in her stomach. Some sloshes over the side when she abruptly clunks the mug back down almost as she would an empty shot glass and she carelessly wipes it off with her sleeve.

“I used to cry whenever I was alone,” Trish says, hushed to the point of hesitancy. “It got so bad I burst a blood vessel once.”

“Yeah. I used to hear you through the wall.”

“You did?”

Jessica bites her lip and smothers the groundless urge to take it back. “Yeah.”

“That’s when you started hanging out with me, isn’t it. At home, I mean.” It’s not really a question, and when Jessica dares to glance up she sees that Trish is smiling ruefully. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be fucking sorry,” Jessica snarls, but she’s so tired that it comes out almost more distraught than angry.

Trish hunches one shoulder up in a resigned, lopsided shrug, still gazing deeply into the oh-so-mysterious depths of her tea, still smiling, and there is something so fragile lurking behind it that Jessica is repulsed, that she wants to flinch away, because one of those incontrovertible laws of the universe is that Jessica Jones breaks shit and therefore she will fumble this and it will shatter beyond all repair and god help her, all of it will be all her own fucking fault and this time it’s _Trish_.

“I can’t help it,” Trish goes on haltingly, studying the grain of the tabletop. “Sometimes I… I’m just sorry. I just feel sorry for existing sometimes. I’ve always… wanted to be more. I wanted to be a hero. But you’ve always been the strong one. The special one. And I just… I’m not the hero. I never got that chance, and the one time you decided to try, I encouraged you. I was so excited for you. But I also couldn’t wait to live through you. To see that role that I dreamed about being filled, even if it wasn’t by me. And I pushed you right into _his_ arms because I just wanted… because I’m really just a useless waste of space and I’m so sorry.”

“What is that. What is that _bullshit_. Don’t fucking _apologize_ ,” Jessica says, and she realizes that she’s sobbing anew, a fresh spate of tears trickling down her face. “I can’t say you have the best coping mechanisms but I know you’re not some flawless goddess, okay, I _know that_ but you are the absolute fucking light of my life anyway and this shitty world is better just ‘cause _you’re in it_. You are your own person and you’re the strongest, most special one I have ever known. Don’t you _dare_ be sorry.”

Trish’s smile trembles, her lips pressing together for a moment, twisting into something closer to a grimace before her eyes spark weakly, flicking up to Jessica’s, and one side of her mouth curves up again. It’s almost a smirk. “Pot. Kettle,” she whispers, and takes a delicate sip of her tea.

Jessica stares for a while. And then, surprising herself, she begins to laugh. Loud, unrestrained, shrieking laughter that wrenches her gut, that makes her toss her head back and shakes the chair beneath her, and, slowly, Trish is caught up in her hysteria, her chuckles growing into rolling peals of laughter like the thunder of an approaching storm crackling in counterpoint. It feels like all of the bad things had built up like debris being caught against a dam Jessica hadn’t known she’d erected, and that the dam had finally burst and everything was being swept away to allow for a fresh start, a surge of shockingly, invigoratingly cold, clean water.

Later, when Trish has removed the rest of the glass from Jessica’s skin and has poured hydrogen peroxide from its brown bottle onto a cotton ball and dabbed away the last of the blood, she lifts Jessica’s pliant hand and kisses the messy rose bloom of her bruised knuckles before swathing them in snowy white bandages. Jessica, drifting and so drained that she’s slurring and can’t hoist her eyelids any higher than half-mast to save her soul, tells her that she’s wrapping them with more than they need, that her hand is practically a marshmallow mummy now, and Trish playfully forms a loose fist and bats her softly on the side of the head like a mother cat scolding her kitten, going slowly enough that Jessica could have avoided it if she’d wanted. Trish then gets out another length of gauze and sternly, haughtily informs her that she might as well accept her fate and allow Trish to baby her without fuss. Jessica keeps up a running monologue of petty complaints and curses just to be contrary, but she can’t keep herself from grinning the entire time, languorously loopy right up until Trish bundles her into bed.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: underage kissing, a homophobic and physically violent, then emotionally manipulative reaction on the part of a parent/guardian, referenced underage sexual activity, and Jessica deciding to shove all her feelings into a tiny little box and ignore them from thereon out.

It was after the birthday party and post-powers-reveal when Jessica first decided to keep tagging along on Trish’s heels even when they got back from school, accompanying Trish to her room rather than retreating to her own as usual. Trish seemed startled by the juxtaposition of Jessica’s school behavior being brought into their home environment, but after her initial confusion she became immediately and demonstrably pleased, bumping shoulders and telling Jessica to make herself at home. As Trish turned away, tucking her hair behind her ear, Jessica caught sight of a faint blush creeping over Trish’s cheek and felt her stomach flutter in response. Trish settled at her desk with her homework and Jessica flopped without fanfare onto Trish’s bed, dragging the appropriate textbooks and notepaper from her backpack and grudgingly getting to work.

Dorothy was also taken off guard when she creaked the door open to check on Trish and found Jessica with her, but unlike Trish there was something sour in her eyes at the revelation, some suspicion hastily hidden behind her sickly-sweet façade of mothering concern. Though she was still too cautious of Jessica to interfere directly, she made a point of leaving the door wide open upon her departure.

“Bitch,” Jessica muttered mutinously.

Trish cut her eyes towards her and then at the doorway, but Dorothy had apparently been out of earshot. For a moment she seemed to be silently deliberating on whether or not to pretend that she hadn’t heard, but then a mischievous little smirk tugged at her mouth and she leaned towards Jessica to murmur, “Where do you think I get it from?”

“Ha. Believe me, I know bitchiness when I see it and you clock in at a whopping zero point zero percent.”

“What makes you the judge?” Trish retorted, halfway to genuine indignation.

“I speak from experience as I am clearly the Lord Bitch, Ruler Of All Bitchiness.”

“Oh, well of course.” Trish simpered unconvincingly and stood from her desk so as to perform a curtsey. “My humblest apologies, Your Heinous Highness.”

“That’s Your Heinous _Royal_ Highness to you,” Jessica said, pompously lengthening her face and sticking her nose in the air. Trish sniggered and swooped over, playfully whacking Jessica into submission with the rough draft of her essay until Jessica momentarily retreated off the bed, her hands thrown up in surrender as she giddily drank in the rare sight of a Trish who was unguardedly happy even in the minefield that was her own home, beaming and breathless. As an afterthought Jessica kicked the door closed behind her before flopping back down, Trish now settling beside her.

It was the next night when they first kissed.

It was two weeks after that when Dorothy walked in on them curled together, in the midst of a lazy make out session, hands wandering, shirts rumpled, cheeks aflame as they jerked guiltily apart, a gossamer strand of saliva stretching between them like a shining thread of spider’s silk before breaking. Damned.

Dorothy screamed at them like she’d caught them feasting on a human corpse. “ _What are you doing?_ ” Again and again, she shouted that, her feet in slippers, her hair an unkempt maelstrom around her as she advanced, enraged. She grabbed Jessica, thoughtlessly fearless in her wrath, and shook her by the shoulders, though Jessica’s muscles had locked up and left her rigid as a stone statue. “ _What do you think you’re doing?_ ”

Trish flung herself between them. Crying out. Useless pleas. Wrenched Dorothy’s hands from Jessica where she still sat on the edge of the bed, frozen with her head down, something dark and dangerous churning in her stomach and boiling scarlet eating at the corners of her vision and Dorothy’s nails leaving scratch marks as they were torn away.

“ _It’s not like that_ ,” Trish shrieked, words sharp and ringing like shattering glass, like a falcon’s cry.

And Jessica felt something within her snap at that.

She surged to her feet. Ran to the window. Threw it open so hard she felt the sash splinter and the panes smash, obliterated, and flung herself out into the cold night air below.

She returned hours later, only after she’d become too exhausted to push herself briefly free of the Earth’s gravity, her legs creaking and throbbing with pain as she forced them to shuffle limply onward rather than buckle beneath her, her skin blasted raw and red by the wind and her hair a tangled snarl which hung down her back, a dead thing reeking of the city.

Dorothy was waiting in the living room for her, enthroned within an oppressive silence.

“Sit down, Jessica,” Dorothy said, her voice hoarse, but her tone was back to its usual light, condescending lilt.

Jessica sat heavily onto the couch opposite Dorothy’s armchair and, droopingly slack, some sad sack of expired meat, waited like the condemned for the fall of the ax.

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

After a few interminable seconds spent wondering whether or not it was even worth it Jessica mechanically lifted her head.

“I’m very disappointed in you, Jessica. In both of you, of course, but mostly you. My little girl has her flaws, but she’s never acted indecently before.” Ever since Jessica’s strength had been revealed to her Dorothy had been disturbingly aware of Jessica where she had previously dismissed her almost automatically as unimportant, an inconsequential pawn. The entire weight of her wary, disapproving attention now pressed heavy and prickling on Jessica’s skin. The scratch marks low on the side of Jessica’s neck had puffed up and become inflamed, raised trails which itched as though hiding worm tunnels.

Dorothy heaved a deep, put-upon sigh, the sort that demanded sympathy. “I suppose it’s my fault. I should have raised her better, but I just can’t get through to her, you know? And then I went and brought you into the picture. Your parents were the ones who raised you wrong and then died on you, so you can’t really be blamed for being such a poor influence. I’m not your mother so of course you don’t listen to me. I should have known better.” Dorothy’s long, shiny, lacquered nails tap against the arm of her seat like talons. Measuring out a death knell. “I should have known.”

Jessica opened her mouth. Closed it again and swallowed, trying to work up enough moisture to say something, but her tongue felt coated in sand and the walls of her throat stuck together enough to make her reflexively clear it and emit a half-formed cough.

Dorothy just watched her, head cocked and eyes glimmering venomously in the low, gritty blue light of early, early morning. “But, well… I know now.”

“Please,” Jessica whispered. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yet it _did_ happen, and I have no indication that it won’t again. Jessica, dear, I honestly think it may be best if we simply made sure. By finding you another home.”

Jessica felt herself lean forward, swaying. Everything was tilting in a sickly roll around her, gravity suddenly unreliable. “You can’t do that. You can’t— I want to stay here with her. It won’t happen again. Just let me stay.”

“You’re both _children_. You can’t be trusted to keep your word.”

Tears stung at Jessica’s eyes but they didn’t fall. “Please. I love her.”

Bitter indignation twisted Dorothy’s features, her earlier rage finally making a reappearance. “Don’t _ever_ say that again. You don’t know what it’s like to be taken advantage of because of a pretty face, and to let it happen because you just want some nice false feelings of _security_. You are an ignorant, irresponsible _child_ with _no idea_ of what would happen if some scandalous little lesbian sex affair got out. Patsy’s entire career is built on being innocent and pure and you would _ruin_ that for her. For _me_. And I will _not_ let that come to pass.” She took in a deep breath and composed herself, reaching up to smooth back her hair, her expression going flat and cold. “Do I make myself clear?”

Jessica glowered to cover her fear, clammy sweat trickling under her armpits and collecting against the band of her bra, and resisted the urge to shiver. “Crystal. Ma’am.”

Dorothy’s lip curled slightly. “Good. This is your only warning. Should there be a next time… well. I can assure you that you’d never see each other again.” She rose and walked out of the room.

Jessica sluggishly lowered herself to her side and tucked her arms against her chest as though she could hold herself together, could dam up the ocean of despair and self-hatred welling behind her breastbone. She stayed there until she slept.

 

~~~

 

The sky is a delicate blue, the thin, clear light of the early morning dissipating the mist which Jessica would’ve taken for the usual city smog if not for the freshness of the damp, chilly air rushing in and out of her lungs in a steady rhythm punctuated by the beat of her sneakers hitting against cold gray pavement. Trish has drawn slightly ahead of her, face in three-quarters profile, eyes somewhat glazed as she listens to whatever’s on her earbuds, the cords swaying a little where they hang down the side of her neck and her ponytail swinging from side to side as she jogs briskly forward.

Jessica doesn’t like people trailing behind her for long periods nowadays, as it makes her spine stiffen and her hair prickle with suspicion she can’t suppress, a touchy paranoia which has inextricably woven itself into every fiber of her flawed being, but Trish almost always ends up ahead anyways. Jessica may be able to bend metal pipes in half with her bare hands and leap like a flea, but her long-distance endurance is still for shit, and out of the two of them Trish is the real athlete, powers notwithstanding.

Not that Jessica can’t keep up. She’d follow Trish to the ends of the earth and back… but that doesn’t mean she won’t ask for a chance to catch her freaking breath when she needs it.

She reaches out and taps her knuckles against Trish’s shoulder to get her attention and slows to a walk. Trish seamlessly follows suit, plucking both earbuds out of her ears and dropping them to dangle against her chest as Jessica carefully avoids thinking of that most awful, bodice-ripper-y phrase “heaving bosom” because even she has standards, and, and _respect,_ damn it. Easing up on her speed chokes Trish’s momentum, and the fluidly mechanical efficiency of her movements is transmuted into the loose-limbed, slightly lurching stroll of the exerted runner, the disciplined kinetics abruptly relaxing into rolling exaggeration, the soles of her shoes momentarily smacking more heavily against the gritty sidewalk.

Jessica passes her the water bottle and she tugs the nozzle loose with her teeth before squirting some water into her mouth, swallowing, and releasing a small, contented exhale before wiping her chin dry with the back of her hand, giving the bottle back, and saying without bothering to look over, “Okay, you’ll tell me eventually anyway, and now’s as good a time as ever.”

“Really is a beautiful day,” Jessica remarks, deadpan enough to verge on sneering.

“Spill,” Trish orders serenely, undeterred. She’s indisputably an eyes-on-the-prize, go-getter type, and pretty much always has been. She’s maybe the only person Jessica’s ever met who could match her for stubbornness.

“Well. I was… thinking…” Jessica’s voice lowered into a mumble and Trish ambled closer until their bodies bumped against each other with each step like a pair of rowboats anchored side by side, nudged together by the waves.

“If you really want to keep it to yourself, you can, you know.”

Jessica scoffs at her and says, “I was thinking I should get a job.”

“Join the workforce? Become a productive member of society?”

They round a corner into the sunlight, and Trish’s smiling, gracile eyes are suddenly illuminated, the clear, crystalline blue discs of her irises flashing lambently, her high cheeks and delicately upturned nose glowing ruddily in the cold. She looks vibrant and _present_ in a way that makes Jessica feel like a shade, drifting in her wake, so gorgeous and alive and _immediate,_ and fucking hell, Jessica feels so gone on her that she could wax rhapsodic even about the colorless drops of snot glistening in her nostrils.

Instead she dredges up a smirk to cover what was doubtless shaping up to be a tremendously poleaxed expression and shoves Trish’s shoulder with her own, gently, though, gently, because after years of breaking tools and furniture and miscellaneous _everything_ she knows her own strength and how easily things shatter at her touch, and she says, “Nah, for the _money_ ,” and is pleases and relieved when Trish chuckles. “I just feel like it’s time to get back out there. I want to _do_ something.”

“You aren’t going back to odd jobs, though, are you? Those crappy little ones you hate? You could do so much more. You’re so smart.”

“And strong,” Jessica adds.

“And determined, and capable, and pragmatic, and intuitive, and—”

“Okay okay, I’m brains and brawn, the whole package. I get it, you can shut up now.”

“I could go on,” Trish quips artfully, pushing her lips out into a thoughtful moue.

“No, seriously,” Jessica insists, but she’s smiling, too, trying to cover up her embarrassment. “Shut up.”

They walk on in silence for a bit more before Jessica admits quietly, “I haven’t really decided what to do.” She doesn’t add that she’s not really good at anything, because her bitch of a therapist, bless her, had given her a very stern lecture about negative versus positive self-talk recently, and Jessica really does not believe that Trish would hesitate to resume to broadcast of Jessica’s supposed character traits if confronted with Jessica’s bullshit self-esteem.

“Well, what have you always wanted to do?” Trish asks lightly. “C’mon, brainstorm.”

Jessica chews on her lip as she mulls it over. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a detective. Like Sherlock Holmes, y’know? Solving all the mysteries. But like hell am I joining the force now.”

“Not all detectives are police, Jess,” Trish says, and when Jessica glances askance at her she shrugs. “Sherlock Holmes was, in fact, a ‘consulting detective,’ not an officer.”

“Nerd,” Jessica laughs, but Trish has worked up some enthusiasm and won’t let her dismiss it out of hand.

“Really, I think it’s a great idea. You could be a private investigator. Taking cases from people who don’t want to go to the cops, helping people who’ve been failed by the system…”

“Getting to the bottom of important cases involving unfaithful spouses and lost pets.”

“Very film noir. We could get you a fedora. Trust me, it’ll be classy.”

Jessica grabs one of Trish’s earbuds and says, as she screws it into her ear, “I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” Trish says, inserting her remaining earbud and starting up the music. They don’t hold hands but they have to stay near enough for the cord not to yank, for their arms to brush, and Jessica finds that they lean into each other, drawing support from each other’s presence as their footsteps synchronize and the sun warms their faces.

 

~~~

 

There was a sort of falling out between her and Trish after Dorothy warns Jessica to keep her distance. After Jessica is reminded that she doesn’t have a family anymore, and that she can’t go around trying to make a new one.

At “home” Jessica once again went straight to her room after school, but this time she’d lock the door and put headphones with shrieking rock music over her ears rather than stretching them for sounds of Trish. Jessica no longer went to the cafeteria for lunches, either. In the halls Trish’s friends tried a few good-natured digs about having trouble in paradise, probably wondering what the hell was up with them, hoping to spur a reconciliation, but Jessica never bothered with nice behavior when she didn’t have Trish and her stupid aura of conscientiousness around, and proceeded to tell them to go fuck themselves, with perhaps a tad more vitriol than was really warranted.

But whatever. Sticks and stones, right? They’d fucking live.

Jessica hooked up with a boy who bought her a soda and a bag of chips. The chips had gotten stuck in the vending machine and Jessica had thought about shaking the entire machine to get it loose… she was positive she’d be able to lift the whole thing and rattle it, if she tried hard enough and lifted from her knees… but the boy looked hilarious with his arm curled into it and his face turning red as he sputtered curses. She just decided to appreciate the view instead, popping the tab on her soft drink and taking a noisy slurp as she watched his ass wriggling.

She dumped him after a few fumbling rounds of disappointing sexual activity and had a fling with another boy. Then dumped that one too for the same reason. Rinse, repeat.

“Slut” was added to the repertoire of names which people called her, because if you didn’t have a Y chromosome you just had to have a label, and she felt as gratified as she was angry, and almost as amused that so many near-oxymoronic terms were constantly being slapped on her… Slut; frigid bitch. Antisocial delinquent; poor, pitiable little orphan. So smart, so very observant; insensitive moron. They couldn’t all be true. But they weren’t all lies.

Trish eventually cornered her in the bathroom.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Wow. Four words everybody dreads more than the plague. AKA: my cue to get the _fuck_ out of here.” She goes to shove Trish out of the way with her shoulder, but Trish sidesteps and clamps a hand around Jessica’s wrist, hard enough to dig her nails in, and Jessica freezes, leaning forward with her caught arm stretching behind her, acutely aware of the flutter of her pulse trapped beneath the pads of Trish’s fingers.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” Trish asked, low and intense, smothered hurt thrumming just beneath.

“So what if I do?” Jessica snarled, staring at the door only a few steps away, but she didn’t make any move to yank herself free and she could feel the beat of blood in her wrist pumping faster. Trish probably could, too.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Jessica added, more softly, but there was still a stinging edge that she couldn’t quite smooth out of her tone. Brittle was her middle name, after all. Break her and you just end up with even more pointy pieces all set to slice and dice. Jessica Jones: the least cuddly person on god’s good green earth.

Trish squeezed Jessica’s wrist once to emphasize, a band of pressure sinking into her bones so deeply that she wondered, hoped, even, with a queer spike of longing, if it’d bruise. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” Jessica said.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Jessica felt lightheaded, the room, with its buzzing fluorescent lights and white tiles, redolent with the harsh scent of industrial cleaning fluid, seeming to recede in reality until the only point of solid truth was Trish’s hand touching hers, and slowly she turned until she could look Trish in the face, everything resettling around her, clarity and comfort flowing out from Trish’s presence like light from the sun.

With as much skepticism as she possibly could, Jessica, ever the poet, said, “Screw you.”

Trish didn’t flinch, as Jessica would have expected. She even seemed to smile briefly, a reflexive twitch of her lips which Jessica couldn’t be sure of when she was staring into the Mona Lisa’s eyes rather than at the soft glossy curve of her mouth. “I’m not lying, Jessica.”

“Oh,” said Jessica, with much wit and insight. “Ah. That’s. Huh.”

Trish _did_ smile then, overtaken by a reluctant grin while Jessica is too distracted to bother taking offense.

“Really?” Jessica asked.

Trish released Jessica’s wrist just enough to slide her hand down and clasp Jessica’s within hers. She must be nervous after all because her palm is sweaty against Jessica’s, but it’s not like Jessica’s going to point it out. Or let Trish’s hand go.

“You’re my best friend,” Trish said. “And I don’t want to lose your company over something so stupid. You mean… you mean a whole lot to me.”

“Oh,” Jessica repeated stiltedly. “Well, you do too. To me.”

The heavy door whooshed creakily open behind her, a draft of dry school-musty air hitting her back as some girl walked around them on the way to the stall the farthest from where they stand, casting a bemused glance at them from the corner of her eye as she passed.

Jessica found herself dropping Trish’s hand after all, as soon as the other girl entered, in fact, and stuffed her fists into her pockets to resist the urge to offer it again.

For her part, Trish curled her fingers up against her chest like they’d been injured. Jessica scuffed the soles of her shoes against the floor, coughed a little to clear her throat, and said roughly, “Well, I mean, we’d better get along. We live in the same place and we’re practically sisters, so…”

Trish nodded into the awkward silence. Something seemed to waver in her expression for a second as her chin dipped down, a chink of vulnerability momentarily apparent in her armor of tranquility, but when she met Jessica’s gaze again she was calm and unaffected as ever. She smiled, warm but dismissive, disappointment cooling it around the edges, and murmured, “Yeah. Sisters.”

As she skirted Jessica on her way to the door she patted Jessica’s shoulder and told her she’d see her back at home.

Jessica reflected on her cowardice and resolutely ignored the sounds of the girl pissing in the farthest stall until she figured Trish was safely far enough away for her to leave, too.

They began to hang out again, but it took Jessica a long time to get to the point where she could pretend not to feel the pangs of yearning she felt around Trish. Around her adopted sister. Her sister. _Sister_ , and _only_ that. It took a long while, but eventually she was able to put it behind her, the way that Trish had, so that it didn’t hurt anymore, or keep her up at night with a bitter sense of regret and futile litanies of self-recrimination. She locked it all away and hid it in the deepest chamber of her shriveled heart, burying it like she would a loved one put to rest in a grave.

Until Kilgrave. Until _Imagine I’m someone you love_.

And that time, when it burst free, she couldn’t lock it back up again.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: discussion of rape and its impact on consensual sex, attempted casual sex, drinking, vomiting, an OC's attempted rape of another OC, and a panic attack.

The therapist Trish has paid for, Cynthia, has a nice place. Low, plush armchairs upholstered in buttery leather, walls painted in light, neutral colors hung with sweeping landscapes to make the room seem larger than it really is, and some sort of abstract art fountain installed off to one side keeping up a perpetual melody of tinkling water. The cheap gray carpet is old enough that it could stand to be replaced, though, worn down and faded where countless people have trodden over it, like a game trail in thin moss. Only less “nature” and more “a record of sorrows past stamped into a shabby layer of 2-D industrialism.”

“I thought we were past our era of silent treatment,” Cynthia says, after a good five minutes of Jessica alternating between staring at her hands as she wrings them together and staring at the wall beyond Cynthia's head. Cynthia is good about letting Jessica talk in her own time and doesn't ever seem irritated by how vague Jessica is about the trauma that landed her here, but Jessica likes her because she also has the uncanny knack of knowing just when to needle Jessica into involving herself in her own therapy. She's kind of a patient hardass. Jessica can respect that.

She's still a shrink, though. Meaning that the best thing about her is definitely the confidentiality.

“Two steps forward, one step back,” Jessica mutters, clearing her throat halfway through and shrugging.

“Is that really what you think of your progress?”

Jessica finally meets her eyes briefly, so as to roll them at her, before slouching forward and hanging her head, elbows on knees and hands dangling limp. “No. More like one forward, two back. The further I dig into my head the more landmines I discover that _he_ left buried there. I have more... I mean things are better than ever, y'know? But it all feels so fucking futile. It just gets... I'm never gonna be okay again.” 

Cynthia quirks an eyebrow at the word  _okay_ . “You sure about that? Seems to me that 'okay' is a pretty low bar.” 

“Well, it's not like I've ever failed to exceed expectations before,” Jessica says snidely.

“You don't have to give a flying fuck about anyone else's expectations,” Cynthia replies with pragmatic candor, supremely unimpressed. “The thing you're working towards is day-to-day functionality and enough satisfaction in life to go on living it.”

“What, like happiness?” Jessica scoffs.

“If having down the basics I just ticked off would make you happy, then yes, you're working toward happiness. Exactly.”

Jessica takes a deep breath in and exhales slowly the way Cynthia had taught her right in their first session. “There are things I used to be able to do... things I enjoyed. I want to get some of my old self back and thought... thought doing those things would be a way to. Like. Reclaim myself a little.” 

Cynthia recrosses her legs, her pencil skirt sliding dryly against the sheer fabric of her tights as she resettles and waits.

“We talked about some of it last time. Things like just walking around the city alone, moving out of Trish's... and I have that job prospect sort of lined up, too. But. I.”

When Jessica swallows her throat clicks painfully, all her saliva gone, leaving her mouth cottony and clumsy. Her cheeks burn with humiliation. She didn't think it would be this hard to say.

“I haven't had sex since it happened.”

She closes her eyes and listens to the fountain burbling away, the dance of water just louder than the ceaseless electronic hum of its pump.

Cynthia remains silent until Jessica risks a glance upward; she is looking at her with a trace of compassion lightening the usual surly lack of bias which characterizes her long, blunt-featured face, framed as ever by the short chestnut bob swept neatly behind her ears. “Jessica,” she says, very sternly and deliberately, “Do you  _want_ to have sex?” 

Jessica thinks about how much she used to like it, the joy and pleasure it offered, the little tricks of behavior to establish the rapport necessary to pick someone up in a bar, drawing near, the closeness and the rhythmic physicality granting her an intimacy she couldn't ever seem to attain any other way, an easy, atavistic connection which made her feel good, made her feel like a part of someone else, trusting and trusted. Made her feel loved, even, however fleetingly, and however sappily pathetic, however _stupid_ , that might be.

She remembers when she felt unwillingly melded to another, overwhelmed by a blind greed more powerful than her own, pulled in closer than she ever wanted to be, sinking into the slimy black heart of everything she reviled and consumed without ever having even the chance to refuse. Forced into a perverted communion.

“I don't know,” she says. “I think so. But.”

Cynthia nods. “Whatever you decide,” she intones gravely, “is up to you. Whatever choice you make is valid.”

“Yeah,” Jessica murmurs noncommittally. “Okay.”

“Just keep your mental health in mind,” Cynthia says, with a firm glare at Jessica's unenthusiastic acknowledgment. “Going out and having sex to prove something may not be a good enough reason. But if you think you'll enjoy it, and that it won't upset your progress, if you think you can get something out of it, you go right ahead. Just keep things slow at first and monitor yourself.”

“Keep myself calm,” Jessica tries to sum up.

“Keep yourself  _safe_ ,” Cynthia corrects tartly. “And have  _fun._ ”

Jessica smiles thinly, but a spark of determination has sprung awake within her, a tentative eagerness. “Sure. Sounds like a plan.”

 

~~~

 

“ _This was a terrible, no-good, shitty plan,_ ” Jessica whispers furiously to herself. The bar's crowded and sweaty and there are too many people and the lighting is too dim and everybody is so fucking _loud_.

But she's got this. She's totally fine, because the alternative is calling Trish and Trish has _just_ eased up on the mother-hen routine enough that she doesn't look like she's gonna plant herself in front of the door and stay up late, well, late for Trish, anxiously waiting for Jessica to come back after an unsupervised night out. Sure, that's maybe an exaggeration, but she's _definitely_ been waiting up for her ever since Jessica started going out alone. She was supportive as fuck that Jessica had decided to start making forays into independence, but mostly it's all been either literal milk runs to the grocery store or long walks spent skulking in the shadows with her scarf pulled up to hide her face so that nobody stops her on the street and asks her, brimming with concern, if she needs a freaking paper bag to breathe into. Usually they'd try to pat her shoulder, too. Fuck is it ever the fucking worst.

Jessica may have been sorta vague as to the fact that she's out here tonight trolling for some no-strings-attached sex with a stranger, but she used to always go places with Trish, and couldn't stand the thought of Trish thinking, even for a split second, that she'd get to come along, that they'd enjoy a night out together like old times like this wasn't a doomed exercise in social failure. Or, god forbid, Jessica would catch sight of Trish's disappointment when Jessica'd have to say, _Hey, actually, I don't want you with me for this, like, at all_ , because there's no way to make that not sound insulting.

Real-World Trish, as opposed to Hypothetical Trish, probably would not be insulted at all, but whatever. This avenue avoids all such contingencies.

Which is why Jessica is currently hunched over a bar, inadvisably downing yet another shot of hard liquor. Her head's swimming a little but not enough that she's sloshed, so clearly she needs to go about this a little more single-mindedly. She signals for another just as some guy with a lot of greased-up hair and a too-tight t-shirt sidles up, gestures to her as her drink arrives, and says, “That one's on me.”

“Thanks but fuck off,” Jessica says, because this guy is some douchebag with skinny jeans, a too-smug smile, and eyes which went straight to her chest as though to inspect the merchandise. She's already decided that she's not going through with anything tonight, and even if she was she's not springing for this asshole, who's gotten everything he's ever wanted thanks to being white, male, well-off, and conventionally attractive and who wouldn't respect any woman ever, let alone in the morning.

“Hey, give a guy a chance,” he laughs, ignoring her unequivocal rebuff and hopping up onto the stool next to her. He's got a calculatedly rueful, charming laugh, and Jessica feels immediately vindicated in her scathing first impression even when she usually feels at least a little guilty at this point in meeting people. Nothing to feel guilty over when you're proven right.

“No,” she says, throwing back her whiskey and relishing the burn it scrapes down her throat before setting the glass down, gently so as not to shatter it or the counter or the guy's jaw, turning away, and summarily relocating herself to the very opposite end of the bar.

She sees him attach himself to some blond chick with a more revealing shirt, smiling that smug smile and plying her with drinks which she eventually accepts as he gets more and more daring with where he puts his hands, but Jessica is determined to get good and drunk so that even though this night was a complete disaster at least she'll have pushed her liver a little further down the path towards being a cancerous wreck, AKA, its true destiny. So she pointedly ignores everything around her and only feels the need to zone back in again when she decides that, yes, now would be a good time to find someplace private to hurl. Even the limits of iron stomachs can be exceeded, but it's not like she wasn't expecting it.

She elbows her way through the people, hazily wondering when the hell so many showed up but mostly focused on her destination: the tiny bathroom hidden in an out-of-the-way corner. And it's occupied.

“Fuck you,” she shouts through the door, and then claps a hand over her mouth, swallowing down bile. It burns way more than the cheap booze, or maybe in just a far more unpleasant manner.

The exit into the alley is right there, though, so she bursts out into the refreshing smell of piss and piles of trash, stumbles a discreet distance away, and vomits behind the dumpster.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she croaks, spits to rid her mouth of the taste, and then wipes her lips on the back of her hand. She might've splattered some onto her own shoes and everything in the history of ever can just go to hell right fucking now, god damn it all. This was a terrible idea. A terrible fucking idea.

The door to the alley creaks open, releasing a brief flood of noisy merriment from within, and she ducks more deeply into the dumpster's shadow out of instinct, a sudden surge of fear catching her unawares, her heartbeat skyrocketing. Two or so pairs of shoes tap on the concrete, and a woman giggles as she trips a little, the sharper sound of her heels scraping momentarily.

“Whoa, careful now,” a guy says, and it's the same guy who hit on Jessica at the bar, because of fucking course.

“Sorry,” the woman replies, still giggling, clearly intoxicated.

Jessica snarls to herself as her heartbeat calms, inexplicably angry that the woman would be apologizing for stumbling over a single step. She's about to stand up, interrupt their little tryst, and make her fucking escape when she hears the wet sounds of the couple making out, abrupt and unwelcome enough that she freezes for a moment in indecision and perhaps a touch of embarrassment. She's not a freaking voyeur, fuck. Now the fuck what.

“Wha—” the woman mumbles, confused, but then the guy must be all over her again, the kissing continuing. There's a soft thump and a smothered gasp. He must've pushed her against the wall.

“Wait,” the woman says, and they're both breathing heavily, and she seems hesitant, almost scared. “Wait.”

“C'mon, baby,” the guy murmurs, practically purrs, utterly sober, and it's muffled like he has his mouth against her mouth, or maybe her neck. His teeth against her throat. “Don't be like that.”

There isn't enough air. Jessica's lungs feel like they've shrunk, like she's breathing through a straw, and the alley wasn't this dark to begin with. Her head feels light, a balloon about to float away, or maybe, no, it's lead, it's creaking on the end of her fragile, jerking spine and she's going to shatter under its weight, oh god, she should be able to stand up, she should be able to walk over to that asshole and put him through the wall, she should, she... should...

“ _Hey,_ ” a new voice shouts, deep and masculine and quelling, coming down the alley. “Care to explain what exactly's going on here?”

“What the hell, dude?” the asshole would-be rapist says indignantly. “We're busy here.”

“ _I,_ ” the woman says, tremulous, and then falls silent.

“Ma'am?” the new guy asks, somehow encouraging and reassuring and inherently _trustworthy_ , all with just one word.

“We were just having some fun, dude,” the first guy says, changing tactics from defensive to conspiratorial.

“Not much fun to be had when one half's not even gonna remember what happened after the fact, let alone consent to it,” the second says evenly, the very voice of reason.

“I didn't _drug her_.”

“Doesn't matter if she's just drunk out of her mind and didn't say 'yes,' besides.”

“Dude,” the man protests, and then there's the sound of footsteps, measured and slow, drawing closer.

“I'd suggest you get the hell away from her, from here, and that you don't ever try to pull shit like that again,” the second man says, rumblingly low, from about the distance that Jessica figured the asshole would be standing, probably nose to nose. “I ever hear you tried, I will find you, and you will not be happy I did.”

The first guy scuffs his feet when leaving, scoffs “Whatever” before disappearing around the corner so as to save face, but he still leaves in haste without kicking up any further fuss, easy as you please. Jessica never would've been able to just intimidate someone away. Especially not a man. She would've had to push him around a little to be taken seriously, maybe break something.

She should've broken something. She should have intervened.

Instead she cowered and staved off a panic attack. Fuck. Fuck everything.

At least she isn't quite hyperventilating anymore. Well. Not too much.

“You all right, ma'am?” the man asks.

“Oh,” the woman says, and starts to giggle some more, seemingly relieved. “Oh, yeah, thanks. Thank you. Sorry. I'm sorry.” And then, like a switch has been flicked, she's crying. “I'm, I'm sorry.”

“Hey, don't worry about it,” the man says, shockingly not panicking at the sight of another person's tears as Jessica would be. But then, Jessica's never been at all okay at offering comfort to others, and she probably isn't a good baseline of comparison. For anything.

“Thank you,” the woman repeats.

“No reason to thank someone for not being scum of the earth,” the man quips, and the woman is startled into laughter for a second. “Really, I was just doing what I'd hope someone would do for me, if I was ever in that position. I'm Luke, by the way. You have any friends inside?”

The woman sniffles a negative.

“Can I call you a cab home, then?”

“Thank you. Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem,” he says warmly, and the door squeals on its hinges as it opens again.

Jessica stays hunkered down, getting control of her breathing until she's absolutely sure she's not going to freak out again. When she stands she has to hang on to the side of the dumpster for balance, her legs shaky under an onslaught of pins and needles which hum in her bones and gives her an excuse to swear some more, biting her lip and staring up at the dark, cloudy sky beyond the walls of the buildings leaning in on either side.

She tells herself she would have helped.

She doesn't believe herself.

 

 

 

 


End file.
